The Kremlin's pointedly dispassionate reaction to the new growth in the number of protests is difficult to interpret as recognition by the authorities of the right of citizens to be dissatisfied - in that case there would be neither the "Moscow case" nor the law on citizens-foreign agents. The Kremlin cannot help but be concerned about the expansion of the geography of protests, their themes and the involvement of loyal groups of the population in them, especially since the problems that bring people to the streets remain unresolved.

The Kremlin has not noticed the growth of discontent in the country and considers the protests of the past summer and autumn in Moscow and other regions to be "the usual background" and "a certain public reaction to certain events." This is how the presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov commented on the Kommersant article about the new growth in the number of protests in Russia in 2019, noted in the report of the Center for Social and Labor Rights (CSLR). According to the CSLR, the number of protests increased from 434 in the second quarter of 2019 to 580 in the third, and their total number reached 1,443.

Formally, Peskov is right: in the third quarter of 2018, against the backdrop of the discussion of raising the retirement age and the adoption of the law, the CCTP counted 834 protests - 1.4 times more than in the same period of 2019. Overall, in the three quarters of 2018, there were 1.2 times more protests in Russia than in the same period of this year, but the number of participants in the summer protests of 2019 was significantly higher than a year earlier - the Moscow protest on August 10 alone brought together 50,000 people. Another thing is that such an attitude towards protests - like, it has always been like this - creates the impression that the authorities do not care about the discontent of citizens and do not seek to find out its causes in order to avoid new conflicts in the future.

The same noticeable increase in the number of protests in the third quarter of the year was also observed in 2018, when the trigger was the pension reform, this year – the non-admission of independent candidates to the Moscow City Duma elections and plans to build landfills in the regions, and the public rudeness of local authorities towards opponents of the landfill in Shies provoked indignation throughout the North: the actions became regular. In several regions, doctors resigned in protest against overtime and low wages. Actions in support of the defendants in the "Moscow case" were also held in other cities of the country.

The talk about the “usual” protest background does not fit in with the authorities’ new attempts to discourage the dissatisfied from protesting – hence the mass detentions at the summer protests in the capital, the swift “Moscow case” against those who protested in the capital and real prison terms for those involved, the attempt to suppress the spread of unpleasant information with the help of the law on foreign agents who are individuals. The authorities are confident in their rightness and are not ready to back down or even discuss their initiatives with ordinary people, whose lives they may negatively affect. Individual concessions do not change the general feeling of the authorities’ readiness to tighten the screws and strangle the dissatisfied with fines or the label of a foreign agent – this has truly become the “usual background”.

Is it possible to get used to protests?